Friday, July 10, 2015

That is, of course, the headline most people are taking from the latest SWTOR blog on the upcoming Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion. You can also add Flashpoints to that. As expected, a segment of players is upset and being quite vocal about it. I can't blame them, I'd be disappointed too if the part of the game I liked wasn't getting new content.

Although, just talking about what's not in is doing a disservice to BioWare as there was a lot more in that developer blog. BioWare is fundamentally changing their instanced group content. 11 more Flashpoints are getting a Solo mode, making the total 14. All of the Flashpoints are getting a Tactical mode. This makes them available from level 10 on to the cap. Hard mode Flashpoints will also all be available from level 50 to the cap. All of the Operations (raids) will scale and be available at the level cap. Also, new rewards.

It's clear that this is not aimed at the progression raider or the veteran who has done them a hundred times already. It is for the new player, or the one who is returning. With the new leveling speed, most of those dungeons would have been useless. Now, they are available most of the game. It seems like the plan is to keep it that way moving forward too.

This seems like an obvious step BioWare needed to take. I'm not surprised there is no new Operation with all this going on, it doesn't seem trivial. In an ideal world, BioWare would be able to make everyone happy. But that is just not reality.